Bigger farms without raids

If you know exactly where the borders of the 256 by 256 blocks are on the map then you can put four 9 by 9 farm plots next to each other. Finding the position of those 256 by 256 blocks used to be difficult (it's much easier now) but I'll tell you the method in case any purists who object to mods are reading.

Step one go to the Mechanic Station and the two large pipes behind it. Find the outer of these two pipes at the end where the pipes are not the same length. You need to find the center of the pipe  

Place some blocks touching the pipe and you'll soon spot the exact centre.

Including the centre block count out sideways 31 blocks. That gets you to the corner of one of the 256 by 256 blocks.  Mark the corner as shown below. Then, with 256 blocks of wood in your hotbar, you can head towards the nearest water placing blocks to mark the edge as shown.

When you run out of wood blocks you have reached the next corner. Mark its position. You can now delete the wooden bar you created. You are probably near water now but if not, repeat the process with another 256 blocks of wood in your hotbar

Now the easy way of finding the corners of those 256 by 256 blocks

Fant has added an extension to his mod which shows the position you want. To use it press 'Enter' and type /setup A menu will appear in which you need to select 'Show Tiles'. When you close the menu  you'll see a grid of red scaffolding which marks the corners of the 256 by 256 blocks.

It's then a simple matter of placing the farming plots so that each of the 3x3 plots are in a separate 'tile.'

Provided you keep the crop score in each farm plot to 36 or less you won't be triggering raids now but your farm plots are still vulnerable to passing random bots so it's a good idea to surround them with a barrier to keep these wandering bots away.

In this area I planted tomatoes,carrots, red beets and potatoes. You'll notice I planted only 6 potatoes to keep the total crop score to 9 since each potato plant has a crop value of 1.5.

Why these crops? because you need 2 carrots, 1 redbeet, 1 tomato and 1 potato to make a veggiburger which completely restores your hunger and thirst.

Setting up an auto crop-watering system

It quickly becomes tedious watering by hand a block of 33 crops but it is possible to set up an auto-watering system  which operates at the touch of a button. Here's how.

Having found the exact joining position of four tiles create a plot of 30 soil divided into 4 plots. Two will be 3 x 3 and two 3 x 2. Surround this area with a 4 high wall and on top of that place a 3 wide pathway which will act as a barrier to wandering bots. Leave a space of at least 7 blocks all the way round your plots. Then surround the plots with a border of metal.

On the corners of your border create a metal 3 frame as below. You should note the back right hand vertical is 2 blocks wide.

Now add this. It should be 20 blocks high, made from metal 3 and long enough to take it over deep water. You will notice that it doubles part of the frame at least 9 blocks high. The end over water does not quite touch the water,

At the end over water put a vacuum pump and connect it with vacuum tubes to a water container

At the corner near the water container add these parts a water cannon, 2 x level 5 pistons, 2 x metal 3 blocks  and a sensor pointing upwards:

Now, above the sensor add a metal bar from one side of the frame to the other side. On that bar add extra blocks which the sensor will detect. You need to space the extra blocks two apart and they should be exactly over the middle of each soil plot

You now need to repeat this bar with added blocks positioned 2 blocks apart. On the last bar at the opposit corner to the water cannon replace the last block with a sensor pointing downwards.

There is a limitation to the controls which will be used - they can only cover five rows. To fix that you will notice that the soil in the last row has been replaced with automatic farm boxes. These will plant, water and harvest themselves. We could have done this with the entire plot but these automatic farm boxes take a lot of resources to make. (A water cannon, a vacuum pump, a controller and a bag of soil)

The sensor you just added will need a slight change. Point at it and press 'E'. Then in the popup change the mode to 'switch.'

Now you need to start adding the controls. Create a 6 by 3  block to position them on. I used metal 3 because I had lots of it and it's less likely to be destroyed by bots if one gets inside. On this place two logic gates and a level 2 controller. Change the first logic gate to an XOR gate by pressing 'E' and selecting XOR. Make the connections shown using the connection tool.

You now need to set the controller. Set it like this:

Possible improvements.

If you want to make the process faster then upgrade the controller. Each upgrade allows you to make it work faster. (It also allows you to control extra pistons or bearings - which we don't need.)

Connect the water container to each of the automatic farm boxes and using 'E' on each, plant some seeds in them. Be careful not to exceed the 9 total value in each tile though.

How it works

(Skip this bit if logic gates leave you baffled)
The switch next to the logic gates and the far sensor are all connected to the XOR gate. When you first assemble this, the sensor at the far side from the logic gates will not have been triggered so it will act like a switch which is off.
XOR gates are only switched ON if only one of the things connected to it are ON. When you flip the switch it will power the XOR gate and also the Vacuum pump which will fill the water container. With only one signal the XOR gate will turn ON and send power to the AND gate and the controller. The controller starts moving the piston 1 which pushes the water cannon along a track. It starts at position 0,0 - both pistons fully closed. The 2nd controller instruction is to go to position 15,0 which is piston 1 at maximum extension and piston 2 fully closed.
The AND gate also has two inputs and only turns ON if both of them are powered. One of those inputs is a sensor which immediately detects there is a block next to it so it turns ON. Both imputs are now ON so the AND gate turns ON. It sends a signal to the water cannon which blasts out water. Meanwhile the piston is moving the water cannon and sensor along the track and the sensor moves away from the first block so turns OFF. That means there is only one signal to the AND gate so it turns OFF cutting off the water from the cannon. Eventually the sensor will get to the next block so it turns on, powering the and gate again and sending a pulse of water from the water cannon. This repeats until piston 1 is fully extended and the first row of crops have been watered. The controller now goes to the third instruction 15,3 - piston 1 still fully extended and piston 2 now at position 3. The next instruction is to go to 0,3 - piston 1 fully closed and piston 2 at position 3. This causes the cannon to work its way down the track firing a pulse of water on each plot.  So it continues, each instruction being carried out in order until position 15,12 is reached. At that point the sensor there is triggered and the XOR gate has both inputs as 'ON' which means it now turns 'OFF'. The AND gate no longer has both inputs so will no longer send pulses to the water cannon. The controller no longer has an 'ON' signal so it reverts to its start position 0,0, following the instructions in reverse order. Now there is the exact reverse of the start conditions and if the switch is turned off then the whole process repeats.